Stories

Dreaming of a cooking school offering hand made craft based courses? Yearning for more flavor and personality in your meal? Believe that artisan food skills are important?

Then The School of Artisan Food, a tipping point for the newest trend in food preparation in the heart of rural England, is the pace and place for you!

AND you’re in luck. Summer 2013 offers a new six-day intensive (Aug 12-17). Students will join a team of British food stars for six days of bread making, cheese making and charcuterie. And enjoy tasting local beers and farmhouse cheeses; the very model of major English food traditions made new again.

Located on the gorgeous Welbeck Estate in romantic Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, the school is housed in the Estate’s former Victorian fire station around a cobbled courtyard, converted into state-of-the-art training rooms in 2009.

Co-Founder/Director Alison Swan Parente, talented educator, foodie, force of nature (and dear friend) is a great believer in the ‘special relationship’ between the US and UK.

She’s made trips to California and New York to “learn from all these influences as well, but we specialize in British breads, farmhouse cheeses and smoked and cured meats…from the gooseberries in the vegetable plot to the cheese made on the Estate, SAF is a very British experience.”

When it comes to serving wine with seafood, we want the wine to marry with the delicate flavors of the fish. In other words, the wine or the fish should not upstage each other in any way. Remaining complementary is key.

Retaining a refreshing palate with wine acidity and working with the flavors from rich and buttery sauces accompanying fish can be challenging.

Most dry white wines will work but it's good to keep some things in mind. Paying attention to the flavors of shellfish or fish you are serving will help guide you in your choice of varietal wine.

Overall, lots of fish have the same basic, gentle taste. A fish like tilapia comes to mind. So with tilapia or any other similar white fish there are lots wines to fit the bill. Choosing wines aged in steel rather than oak, wines like unoaked Chardonnay, Albarino, Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and Gruner Veltliner will reward you with a nice acidity, cutting through the heavy, buttery sauces commonly served with these types of fish.

When it comes to lobster, crab and scallops, the sweetness pairs nicely with the flavor profile of an oaked Chardonnay.

We received a letter from a reader telling us how how much she loved the scene in “Desk Set” (a film that Amy Ephron’s parents’ wrote) where Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy make fried chicken and floating island! And since it’s Oscar Season, it inspired us to ask some of our contributors what their favorite food scenes in movies are...

ANJELICA HUSTONFavorite food scene! I won't say it was 'the Dead', which involved sitting in front of fish-fed goose for 3 weeks! I would have to say 'Tom Jones', the scene where Joyce Redman and Albert Finney eat Lobster....

AMY EPHRONThe scene in Ron Howard’s 'Splash' where Daryl Hannah attacks the shellfish in the fancy restaurant mermaid-style and the scene in 'Big' where Tom Hanks razor nibbles the baby ears of corn the way a kid would. In character, ingenious, and hilarious in both instances.

LYNDA RESNICKI guess the most memorable food scene in movies for me is from 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?' when Jane serves her sister's lunch under a silver salver that once open, reveals a rat, it is kind of heart stopping. To this day when I see dinner being served under those shiny domes I hold my breath until the contents underneath are revealed by the liveried footman. Not an everyday occurrence for sure unless you are as devoted as I am to Downton Abbey.

Shopping eco friendly is easier than you might think, even at a bargain focused store like Grocery Outlet. Recently Grocery Outlet gave me a $30 gift card to see what great eco friendly bargains I could find for Earth Day. Here are my top picks:

Eco Friendly Shopping Tips

1. Buy fresh produce

The less processed and less packaged, the better. Grocery Outlet sells some beautiful greens, I found these greens for just 99 cents a bunch.

2. Choose recycled chlorine free paper products

Recycled paper products are better quality than you might think these days and using them is an easy way to go green.

Altered Egos, a retrospective exhibition of over 100 photographs by acclaimed Los Angeles-born portrait author and photojournalist Nancy Ellison. The exhibit opens Wednesday, March 20, and runs through June 1 in space B231, located on the second floor of the Blue Building.

This retrospective exhibition encompasses a lifetime of seeing through the narrow lens of a camera focused entirely on beauty may say more about Ellison than her subjects, as it always comes down to the eccentric choices of the one behind the camera. In Altered Egos, Nancy Ellison takes us offstage to reveal not only her characters’ magic and charisma but Ellison’s own private encyclopedic matrix of associations that her images evoke. However much this might be the case, her subjects for her represent sublime beauty, and she is clearly ecstatic when her camera finds seamless the worlds of glamour and make-believe. According to Ellison, "altered ego" implies a grandness of scale, worthy of both the ego and its enhancement in the course of capturing it.

The exhibition consists of 114 works spanning Ellison’s career shooting notable talent and personalities such as Pierce Brosnan, Jack Nicholson, Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, Sharon Stone, Sean Penn, the Honorable William Jefferson Clinton and former Secretary of State and Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Mitchum, Angelica Huston, Helen Mirren, Jeff Bridges, Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Gianni Versace, Sting, Richard Gere, Pavarotti amongst others. Ellison’s iconic works from the American Ballet Theater are also included along with numerous still images she took on the sets of major Hollywood film studios.